The purpose of the dissertation is to give you an opportunity to produce a substantial piece of original work. It should be an extended account of a topic or question that lies broadly within the field of either your major or minor subject. In producing your dissertation, you will be expected to show skills in researching primary literature, critically evaluating published information, and marshalling arguments to produce a structured critical assessment of a defined topic.

Examples of dissertations topics offered in the past are available here. You can expect to receive a maximum of four supervisions with your dissertation supervisor. You are expected to meet with your supervisor at least twice during the preparation of your dissertation. Supervisors are only permitted to view a single draft of your dissertation prior to submission. Course organisers will tell you when and how dissertation titles will be released and you will be required to have your title approved by division of michaelmas term. Your dissertation should be prepared in accordance with the dissertation guidelines shown below, which have been issued by the faculty board. Please consult these guidelines at an early stage and pay particular attention to the appropriate closing dates.

For information on plagiarism issued by the board of examinations, please click here. in addition, soon after choosing your dissertation you will be required to sign a form consenting to the use of turnitin plagiarism software. guidelines for the dissertation all nst part ii bbs students should take note of the following regulations and guidelines for their dissertation. Your dissertation must be on a topic associated with either your major or minor subject. You must, by notifying the course organiser for that course, obtain approval of the proposed title and subject of your dissertation.

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You should also notify him/her of the name of your supervisor as soon as you have one. This must be done not later than division of michaelmas term, that is 4.00 pm on monday, 9 november, 2015. You must notify the course organiser and the faculty office of any subsequent changes to either the title or the subject of your dissertation. In order to change your title, please obtain the permission of your supervisor and course organiser, and ask them to inform the faculty office of the changes so an update can be made with student registry. the latest date by which you can change the title of your dissertation is the last day of lent term, that is friday, 11 march 2016. Please note that you are free to do a dissertation in your minor subject, but you should inform your major subject course organiser if you take this option. Your dissertation must not exceed 6,0 words, excluding the cover sheet, title page, summary, appendices, contents page, tables, figures and figure legends , footnotes and bibliography.

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Your dissertation must be typewritten or word processed, double spaced, on one side of a4 paper with 2.5 cm margins, a font size for main body text no larger than 12pt and no smaller than 10pt. Dissertations should be permanently soft bound hard back copies are not necessary using comb binding or wire binding. There are many binding services on offer in cambridge, the university information service is one such provider.

Two copies of your dissertation, in its complete form, must be submitted in accordance with the guidance provided by the department you have written your dissertation in, by the deadline of 12.30 pm on friday 22 april 2016. In addition to the two typewritten or word processed hard copies, the dissertation must be submitted in electronic form, via camtools, no later than 12.30 pm on friday 22 april 2016. please click here for instructions on how to do this. extensions to dissertation deadlines: please note that senior examiners and course organisers do not have the authority to grant extensions to the deadline for handing in your dissertation. Illness or other extenuating circumstances you will need to see your tutor, who will make a case to the applications committee. They will then make a decision as to whether you may have an extension to the deadline. Further information can be found on these sites: you are advised to contact your tutor as soon as you are aware that you may miss the deadline.

Please note that if you miss the deadline you will be considered to have scored zero for your dissertation until we have received approval from the applications committee for an extension. The electronic version of your dissertation may be run through a plagiarism detection software program. For information, please see the faculty board's statement on plagiarism hardcopies of your dissertation must be accompanied by a a4 cover page a sample form is available by clicking here.

Examiners have power to examine you viva voce on the subject of your dissertation. Where given, will be held in the department you submitted your dissertation, held on the same date as the single subject viva voce examinations. please remember it is your responsibility to write and submit your dissertation on time. advice on preparing your dissertation:

The advice that follows relates particularly to dissertations on scientific subjects if you are doing a dissertation in a discipline which is not, in the narrow sense, scientific, you should listen particularly carefully to the advice of your supervisor and model your work on well written reviews in the field in which you are working. Nevertheless, much of the advice that follows is applicable to all writing scientific or otherwise. It is an extended account of a topic or question that lies broadly within the field of one of the courses you are taking. Before you begin, you should spend time defining your topic, discussing this with your supervisor, other members of staff and your colleagues.

If you can define your objectives clearly, you will find that the rest of the process is much easier. You will find that you will need to refine your initial topic to make your dissertation manageable. Remember that, if you try to cover too wide a canvas you will not be able to do your topic justice in the space you are allowed. For example, the role of genes in cancer would be too wide but, is the x gene implicated in cancer of the lung? , would be manageable. Focussing on the essential question is a critical first step be prepared to spend time on this and interact with your supervisor during this process. The exact form depends on what you do, but your dissertation should be divided into sections, reflecting the nature of the evidence that you are reviewing and the arguments should be backed by references, where appropriate.

This means that part of your dissertation will be devoted to presenting the evidence or data which forms the topic hence the need for references , and part will be your own assessment of what you have read or otherwise found out. Reading the relevant literature is essential and, at the end of your text, you must provide a list of the references you have quoted. Your supervisor will help you with the literature and also point you in the direction of other people who have knowledge in the area you have chosen. The task of locating the relevant literature is made much easier these days by the use of computerised literature searches if there is a particular key paper in your field of interest, a computer using web of science, for example can tell you all the more recent scientific papers that have cited it a particularly useful method for tracking the development of a subject following a key contribution. Do not exceed the latter figure without very careful thought and consultation with your supervisor. You should point to gaps in the knowledge see paragraph 7 , or to flaws in the evidence. Beware of starting the work for your dissertation with your mind already made up.

It will often be a good idea to include a separate section setting out promising lines of future research. This could, in some cases, represent a substantial part of your dissertation, and you might approach the writing of this section as if you were preparing a research proposal for a grant giving body. You may even lay the foundations for your future research career! short sentences are better than long sentences! try to be entertaining without being either facetious or colloquial.

supplementary information to assist in the preparation of dissertations latin names of the genera and species in the text etc should be underlined or written in italics. Where a generic name is the same as the last mentioned it may be abbreviated as the initial letter with full stop, eg agrostis canina and a. Vernacular names of organisms can be used without capital letters unless a proper name is involved eg 'bottle nosed dolphins', but 'mediterranean seals'. The latin name should accompany the first mention of the vernacular name and subsequently either may be used.